


little lover's so polite

by cassandralied



Category: Jennifer's Body (2009)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Blood and Gore, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Canon-Typical Violence, Dom/sub Undertones, F/F, Lesbian Sex, Masturbation, Murder But Like in a Flirty Way, Pet Sociopath, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Vaginal Fingering, Violent Sex, Violent Thoughts, demon girlfriendsTM, everything is the same but jennifer doesn't die, it's a Time is what i'm saying, jen goes feral, needy goes feral
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:00:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21893437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassandralied/pseuds/cassandralied
Summary: “Boo, none of that,” Jen continues. She’s curled into Needy so they’re spooning, just like all their sleepovers. The hand that isn’t covering the blonde’s mouth trails up Needy’s bare stomach, touching the soft skin with familiarity like a homeowner back from a long vacation tracing their fingers through dust.--Jennifer always goes to sulk after arguments, even ones with box cutters.Like always, she comes slinking back.
Relationships: Jennifer Check/Anita "Needy" Lesnicki
Comments: 38
Kudos: 425





	1. your love ain't got nothing on me (NEEDY)

_[all of these voices debate in my head_

_one thinks i’m crazy and one thinks i’m dead]_

Needy’s been looking over her shoulder since she got to college. She’s not stupid. She’s never been stupid. _Intelligent and hardworking,_ her teachers called her. The same phrases on her report card every year, but Mom pinned it to the fridge anyway. _A good influence._

She only got in trouble once, and that was Jennifer’s fault anyway, for trailing her fingers so far up Needy’s skirt and pinching her til she squeaked.

She thought it was over when she drove that stupid box cutter into Jennifer’s chest. She’d blacked out after, and awoken to an empty bed and Jennifer’s mom screaming.

The police kept her in custody until they got the phone call.

_“My daughter’s alive.”_

It was on Needy’s eighteenth birthday. Trust Jen to remember, and call her mom to confirm that she’d never been in her room on that night ( _lies_ ) and whoever’s blood that was on the bed, it wasn’t hers ( _and it wasn’t, if it even was blood. Needy’s lawyer told her that just putting the blood into Forensics made the machines spark and pop and fry everything inside them. Guess even taxpayer dollars aren’t a match for demon blood.)_

The shit therapist her mom got her told Needy that it was time to forget Jennifer.

She would have said, how am I supposed to forget her when she’s in my bed every night, but the therapist would have put her on some more of those meds that made her head hurt and the world look gray, so she kept her mouth shut and nodded like a good girl.

She moves halfway across the country for college and majors in anthropology before switching to psychiatry halfway through freshman year and then switching back in sophomore. Everyone in Needy’s class thinks she’s a little weird, with her glasses (she doesn’t need them anymore but she likes the familiarity of them on her nose) and her long pale hair, and all the bulky sweaters she wears so nobody looks too closely by accident and finds her beautiful.

She knows it’s not really Jennifer whispering in her ears at night, just as she knows there’s nobody scratching on the windows of her single-bed room. It’s the paranoia.

But the knowledge isn’t enough.

Needy fingers her scar instead of sleeping for two and a half years.

She chops her hair off on an impulse —it’s been icy blonde since Jen bit her, and all the edgy kids and film geeks think it’s cool. Her new roommate, Joanie, offers to even it up for her, but Needy says that’s okay. She loses the glasses at Joanie’s urging, though, and having a roommate to lie to still beats talking to yourself or the ghost of your missing best friend, so that’s something.

_[blood sticks, sweat drips_

_break the lock if it don’t fit]_

Then in the middle of junior year, the pattern breaks when a soft hand covers Needy’s mouth to wake her up.

“Where’s it at, Monistat?” a painfully real, _alive_ voice that sounds nothing like the ghostly hisses of Needy’s dreams purrs into her ear, breath hot, and Needy shouts awake, muffled by Jennifer’s hand.

“Boo, none of that,” Jen continues. She’s curled into Needy so they’re spooning, just like all their sleepovers. The hand that isn’t covering the blonde’s mouth trails up Needy’s bare stomach, touching the soft skin with familiarity like a homeowner back from a long vacation tracing their fingers through dust. Needy bites Jennifer’s hand, _hard_. Her blood tastes sugary.

Jennifer doesn’t seem surprised, though, or annoyed. She takes the hand off of Needy’s mouth and curls it lightly around her neck, surely staining both the skin and the sheets with blood. “Seriously though. If you scream I’m gonna kill your bitch roommate. ‘Kay?”

“Hey, Vagisil,” Needy replies in a whisper, and hates the fondness in her voice.

“Attagirl. I knew you’d never turn me in. I didn’t let you rot in prison, after all. Turn over, let me get a look at you.”

Needy does.

“You cut your hair,” Jennifer says. They’re sharing the same air. Needy’s short locks, white in the darkness, appear to be melting into Jennifer’s long chocolately hair. Jennifer’s smile is red and full of teeth. “I like it, seriously. Very, like, college liberal of you. And is that a second piercing?”

“What are you doing here, Jennifer?”

“Visiting my favorite Needy girl, of course.” Jennifer puts emphasis on Needy’s nickname, and pinches her nipple through her bra, _hard_ , at the same time.

“It’s Anita, now.”

She might always think of herself with the nickname that Jennifer gave her, but everyone at college calls her Anita, and she’s liking it.

The old Jennifer would have laughed and said _puh-lease_ , but maybe death has changed her after all, because she scans her best friend’s face with those thick-lashed eyes and says, “Okay.”

“Are you planning on staying?” Needy asks. She wants to strangle Jennifer with her bare hands. Also, she wants to kiss her and say _please don’t leave, never leave again_.

“Duh,” Jennifer says. “You still need me.” But the vulnerability in her eyes tells a different story. _I still need you._

Needy suddenly knows, with an absolute certainty, that if Needy kicks her out, Jennifer won’t come back.

“Fine,” Needy says, and curls tighter into her best friend’s body, which is still soft despite the slasher story of womanhood cutting her to the bone in high school. “But no sex tonight. I have a final tomorrow, and I’m tired as shit.”

Jennifer laughs low into Needy’s hair. “I missed you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title quote: Little Lover's So Polite by Silversun Pickups  
> chapter title quote: Mad Love by the Pretty Reckless  
> song quotes used: Mad Love by the Pretty Reckless, Kiss with a Fist by Florence & the Machine


	2. now there's someone inside me, i think that it's you (NEEDY)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time they fight, really fight, it’s a screaming match to rival the ones they had in middle school, and it isn’t about anything nearly as important as who called dibs on Bobby Mulligan, the best dodgeball player in the sixth grade, with hair as soft as Jennifer’s and eyes as blue as Needy’s.

_[when you come around i lose my mind from the sound_

_of your voice and your laughter; i’ll come right after your love]_

Jennifer doesn’t kill Joanie as long as Needy agrees to move in with her. It’s something Needy probably shouldn’t be as okay with, but she is.

Wherever Jennifer’s been, she’s been getting rich. She buys them a little house, basically a cottage, near Needy’s school but far enough away that any screams are swallowed by the forest, and she plucks fat spiders out of the woodwork herself and squeezes them between two manicured fingers until they pop. When Needy makes faces, that only encourages her.

They share the bed, but they don’t fuck. Needy doesn’t know if it’s because she’s not ready or because she doesn’t want it.

Maybe she just wants to make Jennifer wait, to prove that she’s the one with the power now. To show her that this isn’t high school anymore.

Jennifer doesn’t press the issue. She curls up around Needy like a cat, her heart impossibly beating, and it’s disurbingly domestic. In the daytime…well, Needy doesn’t ask what she does in the daytime, but she notes the vivid flush on Jennifer’s cheek and the dried blood in the shower drain more than once a month, and she knows.

She should be putting a stop to it. She isn’t.

_[i am alive when i battle with you_

_you think you amaze me, i think that it’s true]_

The first time they fight, really fight, it’s a screaming match to rival the ones they had in middle school, and it isn’t about anything _nearly_ as important as who called dibs on Bobby Mulligan, the best dodgeball player in the sixth grade, with hair as soft as Jennifer’s and eyes as blue as Needy’s.

It’s not even about killing people.

“You’re fucking jealous!” Needy screams, maybe a little bit intoxicated. She’s still dressed for her date, lipstick red as her dress, both chosen specifically to piss Jennifer off even if she’d never admit it. Red has always been Jennifer’s color, just like push-up brashave always been Jennifer’s thing.

“You’re jealous because she likes me and she treats me like a human being instead of fucking abusing me for seventeen years!”

“You melodramatic little cunt,” Jennifer seethes. She goes quiet when she’s angry, and her eyes glint like knives, but Needy isn’t scared even when Jennifer spins her around and rips the entire back off her dress, lace and fabric tearing with a sound a little bit like flesh. Needy’s scar burns hot against the air, as flushed and swollen as its owner. “Do you have to hide _this_ from her, huh? Hide who you really are? At least you can be honest with me.”

Jennifer’s fingertips are like ice as she traces the scar and every nerve ending in Needy’s body floods with adrenaline. Her other hand pushes some stray hair off of Needy’s neck so she can lean in and whisper hot against the skin. “What’s going to happen when the cravings start, baby girl, and you want to munch a little bit more than carpet?”

Needy gapes in horror. “I didn’t kill you,” she says. “I don’t have your powers. I don’t have to —to _do that_.”

“You wanna bet, Exorcist’s Baby?”

Needy wrenches herself out of the other girl’s grip and slaps Jennifer across the face, then shakes her hand because it stings.

“That _hurt_ ,” Jennifer says triumphantly.

“You fucking bitch, you did this to me,” it’s snarled low, and they’re both nearly shaking with arousal. Needy wants Jennifer’s fingers inside of her, now, and she wants to twist her hands into the other girl's hair and _pull_ , maybe til Jennifer’s head pops off like a Pez dispenser, maybe just until it hurts.

But to do that, or anything else that Needy wants to do, would be like giving in, and _Anita_ is a sore loser.

She grabs the bottle of wine by the throat, spins on her heel, and stalks up the stairs in bare feet and a ruined dress. “Don’t you dare come to bed tonight!” she shouts, and slams the door behind her, making the foundation of their little paradise shake.

_[cheers to regret, wash it down with some booze_

_drinking like lovers do]_

Jennifer doesn’t come to bed, but Needy wishes she does, because she just stays up drinking straight from the bottle and watching shitty cable tv in her underwear, the black push-up bra she’d bought specially for the occasion and the pink lace thong she’d stolen from Jennifer’s underwear drawer.

She thinks about the girl who’d asked her out, of the date turned makeout session that Jennifer had barged in and ruined. Her name was Dani and she was captain of the basketball team and she was the kind of girl who’d be totally out of Needy’s league in high school. _(don’t you have a type.)_

She had a very small, soft mouth that Needy wanted to bite bloody, and she wore a gold bracelet with a little heart charm.

Needy doesn’t know what happened to Dani after Jennifer yanked Needy out of the room and slammed the door, but she has an idea. She’d never seen Jen so angry, not when Chip asked her out in tenth grade, not when her dad left, not even when Grace Bentley called them dykes for ditching their dates at middle school prom to go get drunk on the roof and Jennifer had pushed Grace off it.

Needy thinks about Dani’s soft, forgiving smile, and she thinks about the bloodstained little heart charm Jennifer had dropped in the key dish, and she reaches down and begins to touch herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title quote: Mad Love by the Pretty Reckless  
> lyric quotes used: Mad Love by the Pretty Reckless, Mad Love by the Pretty Reckless, Like Lovers Do by Hey Violet


	3. i'd probably still adore you with your hands around my neck, or i did last time i checked (JENNIFER)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jennifer wakes up when Anita comes home. Her eyes look dead, haunted. Her hands are covered in blood.

_[broke your jaw once before, spilt your blood upon the floor_

_you broke my leg in return, so let’s sit back and watch the bed burn]_

Needy —Anita, sorry, is super hot when she’s pissed. She always has been, and maybe that’s part of the reason Jen was always trying to provoke her, from literally day one when she pricked her finger just to see what Anita would do, until it escalated to pouring lemonade in her bed and eating her boyfriend.

She doesn’t regret that, by the way. Killing Chip. She hadn’t regretted it since Anita had hurt her, made her leave, told her she was _wrong_. That everything about Jennifer, those jagged edges Anita had always smoothed over with her understanding smiles, was _wrong_. Like the older girls were right when they called them dirty, called them perverts, called them dykes.

Jennifer is a firm believer in getting even. When Anita kissed Billy Drake in spin-the-bottle even though she knew Jennifer liked him, Jennifer went straight to Mrs. Lesnicki and told her that she was worried her daughter was _having sex_ , and she didn’t want to tell on her, but she’s just _worried, really_.

And when Jennifer said she’d give her five dollars to jump into the deep end of the pool and Anita nearly drowned and Jennifer only gave her three-seventy-five cause she wanted to buy ice cream, Anita had made them go to the pool the next day so she could tie Jennifer’s bikini top a little loose so it would come off in front of everyone, including an interested lifeguard. Jennifer’s mom had been furious but Anita couldn’t stop laughing and that was kind of worth it.

Now’s no different. Anita wants to go on dates with other girls, even though she’s in love with Jennifer, even though she’s taken Jen’s entire heart between her hands and also literally fucking stabbed her? And she wants to wear Jennifer’s freaking thong to do it? Okay, but Jennifer’s going to be a bitch and maybe shred a few of Brandi’s stupid, cheating bones between her teeth pretending that it’s Anita she has in her jaws and not just a dollar store version of herself.

Anita’s at breakfast in the morning like nothing happened, turning on all the lights to the complaints of a groaning Jen, who was just trying to get some sleep on the couch.

“You making eggs, Monistat?” Jennifer asks, running a hand through her hair as it falls back into place, because demon monster things don’t get bedhead.

“Not for you,” Anita says, and smacks the spatula sharply down. The eggs hiss, and Jen winces in sympathy.

“That’s fine,” she says easily. “I had a big dinner last night.”

There’s cut-glass fury in Anita’s eyes. “We’re out of orange juice. Don’t get caught for murder.”

“You got it, boss.” Jennifer slides off of the couch and presses a big, sloppy kiss to Anita’s check before walking upstairs to get dressed.

She _knows_ Anita watches her go.

_[is it still me that makes you sweat, am i who you think about in bed?_

_when the lights are dim and your hands are shaking as you’re sliding off your dress?]_

Jennifer never really thought she had a crush on Anita. Crushes were fleeting things, boys that seemed like fun at first but weren’t any fun when you got your hands on them.

But her and Anita? That shit was forever, ever since Jennifer found her alone in the sandbox and Anita invited her to play. Ever since Anita licked the blood off her cut, practically declaring to the universe that they’re a package deal.

Enhanced senses are just a perk of the demon thing, and that’s why Jennifer knows Anita’s been playing with Rosie Palms as soon as she steps into the bedroom.

“Jeez, if you missed me so much you could have just said so,” Jennifer says, but she’s undeniably pleased. Anita wasn’t masturbating because of fucking _Brandi_ , after all. It was all Jen.

She’s seen Anita masturbate once, with Jennifer’s vibrator. It was during a sleepover. The other girls were in the living room, but Anita got to stay in Jen’s room. Anita had looked gorgeous when Jennifer had come back from the bathroom, all flushed and guilty, hair every which way and the vibrator still buzzing inside her underwear.

“Holy fuck,” Jen had said, or something like that.

Anita had started crying.

“You got five minutes,” Jennifer was always weak for her best friend’s tears. Still is. “Finish up and put it back where you found it, kay?”

“You won’t tell anyone?” the blonde had sniffled, all big blue eyes.

“Course not. What are biffs for?”

_[and when i’m gone, remember you’re the one_

_and just because i fight don’t mean that i never learned how to love]_

Jennifer wakes up when Anita comes home. Her eyes look dead, haunted. Her hands are covered in blood.

“Try not to get it on the coverlet,” Jen murmurs. “I’m weirdly fond of this one, and you’d look _so_ good naked on it.”

“I killed someone,” Anita says.

Jennifer sits up, and raises an eyebrow. “You don’t say.”

“I _ate_ someone.”

Jennifer sighs and slides out of bed. “Let’s go get you cleaned up.”

Anita stands in the hot shower spray, shaking slightly as Jennifer works the conditioner through her short hair. “It gets easier,” Jennifer promises, even though _she’s_ never found it particularly hard taking what she wants.

Anita stays silent, even when Jennifer washes the blood off her tits, even when Jennifer kisses her shoulderblade but doesn’t go any further.

“You can tell me about it,” Jennifer says, wrapping Anita in the fluffy towel and watching her lean into the touch. “If it helps, I mean.”

They get into bed and turn the lights out, and Anita doesn’t speak until they’ve both been lying awhile, silent in the dark. “He wasn’t a bad person,” she says.

Jennifer freezes.

“He wasn’t a criminal, or a creep, or anything. He was a nice kid, and he asked me if I was lost, and he was still smiling when I crushed his windpipe between my teeth like jelly.”

Hesitantly, Jennifer intertwines their fingers, even though she doubts Anita finds comfort in the touch. “It’s okay,” she says, like an idiot. “It’s going to be okay.”

Anita curls into her and sobs silently into her shoulder, whole body shaking, and Jennifer feels stupid and helpless. _This is all your fault_.

_(I didn’t want to be alone.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title song: 505 by Arctic Monkeys  
> Song quotes used: Kiss with a Fist by Florence + The Machine, Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off by Panic! at the Disco, Devils Don't Fly by Natalia Kills


	4. i'm in the passenger seat, you're in control (JENNIFER)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anita fucks her like god. Like oblivion. Like the world is ending and she wants to take one last bite out of it before they go.   
> (happy femslash february ft. the feral lesbian sex you've been waiting for)

_[ i’ve got more wit, a better kiss, a hotter touch, a better fuck_

_than any boy you’ll ever meet, sweetie you had me ]_

Anita will say that it’s because Jen was teasing her, but the truth is Jennifer’s been teasing her, tempting her, since they hit puberty. Sexuality is a weapon Jennifer wields around boys, but with Anita it’s a familiar caress, a lingering stare, nothing more no matter how much they both might wish it.

It’s Anita who initiates it, because it’s always been Anita, changing their dynamic from day one. She comes home, slamming the door hard behind her.

“Rough day at the office, sweetheart?” Jennifer drawls. She’s on the couch in her underwear, sucking at a green popsicle that only highlights the redness of her lips and watching reruns of _Friends_. Anita snarls, like _actually_ snarls, and then her bag is discarded on the floor and her callused hands are in Jennifer’s hair, pulling, tugging, and they’re kissing like oil and water. She’s in Jennifer’s lap, her jeaned crotch rubbing against Jennifer’s thin boxers in a perfectly satisfactory way and yet it’s nowhere near what Jennifer needs.

“Fucking cunt,” Jennifer breathes as soon as they separate, and what she means is, _don’t you dare leave me like this_.

Anita smiles, like Jennifer’s just something she does to let off steam, and climbs off of the brunette’s lap. “I fucking hate canned laughter,” she says. “Change the channel, will you? I’m gonna get undressed.”

She sashays upstairs in a way that she _definitely_ learned from Jen, and Jennifer sets her mouth in a pert little pout and dials the volume as high as it possibly goes.

_[ her fight and fire is fury,_

_oh but she loves like sleep to the freezing ]_

Anita doesn’t come downstairs once she gets changed, so Jennifer finishes that episode and three more without really watching them, just to make them both wait, before slinking upstairs with that scolded-cat-gait of _i know this is wrong and i’ll get the spray bottle for it but goddamn if i’m not doing it anyway_.

Anita looks bored and annoyed and _completely_ naked, and both the demon and human parts of Jennifer _salivate_. She’s fingering herself, already two fingers deep, and she tries to hide the way her eyes light when she notices Jen standing in the doorway.

“You can come in, I guess,” Anita says, clearly trying for an unimpressed tone, but Jen doesn’t call her out on it, just smiles with all three rows of teeth and shuts the door behind her.

Jennifer grabs Anita’s wrist and pins her to the bed and Anita slaps her across the face with fingers still wet from her own slick. Jennifer licks her lips, raw, animalistic. She’s never been so turned on.

Anita fucks her like god. Like oblivion. Like the world is ending and she wants to take one last bite out of it before they go.

It’s not how Jen’d imagined, on the cheap and squeaky mattress in the middle of nowhere, with her hips arched unattractively and Anita buried wrist-deep inside of her, fangs showing, hair in disarray. No, when Jennifer always pictured this (and she did, oh, she did) it was always on Jennifer’s plush queen under fairy lights, and Needy was just sort of lying there while Jen tried out whatever she’d learned in gay Cosmo.

This is so much better.

“I hate you,” Jennifer tries to snarl, gasping instead as Anita’s fingers curl agonizingly slow. Anita leans down and kisses her, gentle and cruel, and she’s never looked so beautiful with that dread light in her silvery eyes.

“We both know that’s not true.”

_[ your love is scaring me_

_no one has ever cared for me as much as you do ]_

They sleep in the same bed like nothing’s happened, and Jennifer would be pissed if Anita didn’t look so fucking angelic when she sleeps, like a little girl with her fluttering eyelashes and pale hair.

Jennifer loops her thumb and forefinger around Anita’s wrist. It’s so delicate, and she could snap it easy as blinking. She never would.

Even after her transformation, when she could taste Anita’s pulse in her mouth, when she had her all nice and soft and helpless pinned up against the wall, Jennifer knew she didn’t have it in her to hurt her. She never would have, if Anita hadn’t changed the rules of the game by fucking _stabbing_ her. Because Jen treated her boyfriend like a Happy Meal, or because Jen was changing, _maturing_ into something beautifully violent and Needy Lesnicki would never let herself be left behind?

Anita stirs in her sleep, like she’s having a nightmare.

A good friend would wake her. A good _girlfriend_ would hold her close.

Jennifer props herself up on her elbow and simply watches, green eyes catlike in the growing dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title: Scary Love by the Neighbourhood  
> quotes used: Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have without Taking Her Clothes Off by p!atd, Cherry Wine by Hozier, Scary Love by the Neighbourhood


	5. we could be the only lovers left alive (NEEDY)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We only need each other,” Jennifer said, certain as thirteen year olds almost never were. “Sandbox love, remember?”  
> “I remember.”

_[ we made a pact and said forever_   
_then we blurred the lines so much we lost our way ]_

“Sophie Dupont says we’re weirdos for spending so much time together,” Needy Lesnicki had said when they were thirteen, playing with the pink and turquoise friendship bracelet tied a little too tightly around her ankle. Needy and Jen had their necklaces, but friendship bracelets were all the rage and it wasn’t like she was going to turn it down when Jen spent so much time making it for her and making sure she used her favorite colors beside.   
“Sophie Dupont’s just jelly she doesn’t have a best friend like you,” Jennifer spoke _(she speaks and her word is law)_. “Besides, her mom told my mom that Sophie munched carpet at summer camp.”

None of it was true, but Jennifer saying it kind of made it so, and even at thirteen, Needy understood. But she pressed it.

“Well, Hanna R. says we should have boyfriends. She says only the cool girls get boyfriends.”  
Jennifer scoffed. “Boyfriends? God, what are you, twelve?” She shoved at Needy until Needy took the hint and crossed her legs so that Jen can lay her head in her lap.

“Braid my hair?”  
“Okay.”

“Boys are dumb. They’re fine for kissing and stuff, but they can’t braid hair or paint nails and they always get mad when we beat them at dodgeball.”  
“When _you_ beat them at dodgeball,” Needy said absentmindedly, focused on the tiny braids she’s weaving together into a big braid. Needy’s always been shit at sports, but Jen has this sort of innate viciousness inside her that makes her great at them, and she never let a single rubber ball touch her biff.

“Do you think having a boyfriend will be the same as playing boyfriend-girlfriend?” Needy asked. Jennifer looked thoughtful. Their faces were very close, with Needy taking her time with the braid.   
“Why do you care?”  
Needy thought about Brandon from the other class, and how Olivia M. had told her that he’d wanted to ask her to the spring dance. But something told her that would just make Jen mad, even if Brandon was the second-coolest boy in school and best friends with the boy Jennifer supposedly liked. “Dunno.”  
“We only need each other,” Jennifer said, certain as thirteen year olds almost never were. “Sandbox love, remember?”  
“I remember.”

_[ and if all we had to run from were wolves and bees,_   
_oh i could be a fantasy, and you could breathe the night with me ]_

  
Seven years later, Needy wakes up gasping in the bed they share. Jennifer’s watching her.   
“Why didn’t you wake me?” she demands. Cold sweat clings to her limbs, sticking the sheets to her like blood and her cheeks are flushed hot, but Jennifer’s eyes are cool and detached. “Dunno,” her best friend-turned-enemy-turned-god-knows-what says.   
Needy’s chest heaves. She’s genuinely at a loss for words and furious with herself for expecting Jennifer to care.

Needy ends up downstairs blankly watching The Price is Right and all she can think about is the slick feeling of blood coating her throat. She wants to run, run until the night flays the uncertainty from her skin and the humanity from her bones. She wants to rip open a throat or crack a skull for the soft meat inside.

She wants to go home and be sixteen again and curled up under the covers texting her best friend.  
Jennifer comes downstairs then, and drapes a blanket around Needy’s shoulders. “Can I sit?” she asks, and Needy says nothing. Isn’t sure she could if she wanted to. Her chest feels leaden.  
Jen takes her silence as affirmation and cuddles close, her head on Needy’s shoulder. “Sorry I didn’t wake you,” she murmurs into the soft skin of Needy’s shoulder and despite those sharp, sharp teeth Jen hides behind a pretty smile, Needy knows she’s never been in any danger.

_[ i’ve got nothing on you_   
_you were all i’ve had to lose ]_

The police come to their house at five in the morning and Needy answers the door in a slip of a t-shirt with the thick woolen blanket wrapped around her shoulders, more for comfort than anything else. She’s been feeling the cold less lately. She and Jennifer had fallen asleep on the couch and the tv still plays softly.  
“Yeah?” she asks, trying to feign exhaustion and annoyance but all she can think of is kill kill kill. The officer is fat and he smells like a stereotype -stale donuts and cigarettes. Needy wonders if he’ll taste sweeter than the others.  
“Uh, Anita Lesnicki?” he says it like Lez-nicki, like lezzo, and Needy thinks gee, never heard that one before.  
“Yeah.”

She waits expectantly. One of the officers behind fatso is trying to pretend like he’s not staring at her thighs.  
“Do you know this man?”  
A picture is shoved in front of her face and she recognizes that unattractive mug, that bobbing Adam’s apple. She’d eaten it raw just a few nights ago.  
“No.”

Two of the officers look at each other. They both know she’s lying, Needy thinks, but what the fuck are they going to do about it?  
“Can we come in?” Donuts asks, and Needy says, “No.”  
“Why not?” he pushes and she snaps, “Because it’s the middle of the goddamn night and I’m not wearing any fucking underwear.”

His colleagues exchange blushing looks. Two little boys, hiding behind Donuts. Needy tries not to roll her eyes.  
“You go to Liverston U, Miss Leznicki?”  
She wraps the blanket tighter around herself. “Yeah.”  
“Why don’t you live in the dorms?”  
Needy frowns on the inside, but her face stays stone neutral. “I’m shy.”  
“Does anyone live here with you?”  
Needy thinks of a box cutter sinking deep into Jennifer’s stomach. “No,” she says. “No one else lives here.”  
There’s a thud from inside -Jen must have rolled over in her sleep and fallen off the couch, and Donuts takes a step closer. “What was that?”  
“A ghost.”  
“Miss Leznicki —“  
“Leave me alone or get a fucking warrant,” Needy says in that dead even tone and shuts the door in his face.

Two days later, she’s coming back from campus when she’s surrounded. Donuts is gone, and there’s a female cop in his place with hair and skin pulled tightly back. “Anita Lesnicki?”  
“What.”  
“You’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney. If you don’t have an attorney, one will be provided to you.”  
Needy numbly allows herself to be cuffed.  
She doesn’t wait for Jennifer.

_[ so testosterone boys and harlequin girls,_   
_dance to this beat and hold your lover close ]  
_


End file.
